(after) Nicolas de Staël - Abstract Composition - Pochoir 1959

(after) Nicolas de Staël - Abstract Composition - Pochoir Published in the deluxe art review, XXe Siecle 1959 Dimensions: 32 x 24 cm Publisher: G. di San Lazzaro. Nicolas de Staël Nicolas de Staël was born at the beginning of year 1914 in Saint-Petersburg (Russia). Son of General, his family took the road of the exile (Poland, on 1919) because of the Russian revolution. Very young, he lost successively his father and his mother and was adopted, with his sisters, in Brussels. De Staël was a brilliant student at the Royal Academy of the Fine art of Saint-Gilles-Les-Bruxelles (at the beginning of the 30s), made numerous journeys (Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Italy). During one of them, in North Africa (1938), he met Jeannine Guillou, also painter, with whom he lived henceforth. Arrived in France in 1938, he studied the painting with Fernand Léger. In 1939, the artist made Jeanne Bucher acquaintance who was a famous gallery owner, interested in his work. The war took Nicolas de Staël away from Paris; he enlisted in the Foreign Legion. Demobilized (1940), he joined his partner again in Nice where he began to sell some paintings. He established contacts with artists who took refuge on Côte d’Azur: Alberto Magnelli, Sonia Delaunay, Henri Goetz, etc. Under their influence, his painting evolved from representation to abstraction. Nicolas de Staël was back to Paris in 1943; his meeting with the painter Cesar Domela contributed largely to the evolution of his art towards the set of light and shade. The post-war period turned out extremely difficult for the artist (few sales, hardships, death of his partner in 1946). In 1947, Nicolas de Staël settled down in a new studio, close to Georges Braque’s one in Paris. He married Françoise Chapouton. De Staël became friends with the poet René Char who gave him the credit for the illustration of his book ''Poems''. At the beginning of the 50s the artist came back to the representation art. He exhibited (Gallery Jacques Dubourg, Salon de Mai, etc.), made very big formats. In 1953, attracted by the South of France‘s sunlight, he settled a studio in Lagnes, near Avignon. The artist spent henceforth a lot of his time in this part of France, to Ménerbes ( Vaucluse), then to Antibes. His first American exhibition is organized in Knoedler Gallery (New York). American collectors loved his art very much there. Nicolas de Staël knew an increasing success. In 1954, he left, far from his people, to Antibes. His rhythm of creation still accelerated, multiplying still lives, landscapes and seascapes. On March 16th, 1955, Nicolas de Staël committed suicide, leaving unfinished his biggest canvas, The Concert.